We found out about it this morning, about 9:30, when we began our day. How old was the news at that point? Not very.

Leah beat me to the web and announced, “Osama bin Laden is dead.”

I may have said, “Huh.” It was not a moment of high emotion for me. I was already thinking of potential ramifications. You do that when you live abroad and the U.S. does something dramatic.

I wasn’t sure how it would go, but on Day 1, the reaction in the UAE was muted.

It was a big story, certainly. Everyone seemed to know by the middle of the day. Our Filipino cab driver had heard about it by 11 a.m., and he isn’t always up to date on world events. He didn’t seem to have an opinion on it.

I suppose my first idea was that it might be a little sticky, in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, one with about 1.5 million Pakistanis (from a total of 8.3 million people) in it. If I were, say, a terrorist, and I was looking for Americans, well, about 40,000 of us live here.

Even before we had seen the news, the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi had e-mailed Leah with a warning. In part it read: “U.S. citizens traveling and residing abroad [are warned of] the enhanced potential for anti-American violence following recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan. Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where events could cause anti-American violence and strongly urged to limit travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

Well, we had to go outside our homes … to get to work. So out we went. And we weren’t particularly nervous — even if we perhaps should have been.

It struck me as plausible that whatever remains of Al Qaeda might be inspired to attack somebody or something as soon as possible. The top guy gets taken down, organizations react. But I also thought that a spur-of-the-moment attack would have far more impact inside the U.S. than here in the UAE, which could be rationalization, but that’s how I thought.

At the paper, our editorial take was that Bin Laden hasn’t mattered in the Arab world for a while now, that the radical religious/murderous Islamic politics preached by Bin Laden has not taken root. Bin Laden, then, was a sort of gangster who no longer was a real player in world events.

Other reactions depended on your national point of view.

India’s take was particularly interesting: They were quick to note that Bin Laden was found deep inside Pakistan. India and Pakistan have issues nearly all the time, and the terror attacks in Mumbai back in 2009 left Indians believing Pakistan allows terrorists to live there freely.

What I found, as the day went along, was that nobody seemed very upset about Americans flying into Pakistan and killing Bin Laden. That surprised me a bit. I thought I would see or feel hostility somewhere.

Turns out, a lot of Arabs in this part of the world have been unhappy with Bin Laden for a long time because they feel as if the non-Arab world had shifted into an “Arab = terrorist” frame of mind that was intellectually lazy but an easy shorthand. And it was mostly because of Bin Laden.

And when you consider how far and wide Al Qaeda-inspired attacks had been felt … Spain, England, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Yemen, India, Philippines … well, there wasn’t much sympathy for the guy thought to be behind them. A lot of people in this region felt like Bin Laden was bad news, and they hope his being gone will make things easier for Arabs traveling and living and working abroad.

The National was nearly one entire cycle behind the news. The hard news went up on the website, but the print product led with an analysis under a headline which read: “A world without bin Laden”.

The first nine pages of the A section were all Bin Laden-related.

We also had a story about UAE officials essentially saying “it can’t happen here.” They seem to be confident in the security apparatus, and the sense also is that the UAE is a sort of neutral corner of the globe where everyone comes and goes and doesn’t get out of line.

The only mildly odd moment I encountered was in a cab on the way home. A large chunk of cabbies here are from Pakistan, many from the Peshawar area,which is known for religious zealotry. A young guy picked me up, and looked at me in the mirror. “Where from?” he asked. And I said, “California, United States.” And he said, “America?” I said “Yes.”

He smiled.

I asked him where he was from. “Pakistan,” he said. I said, “Where in Pakistan?” He said, “Peshawar. You know where this is?” I said: “Near Afghanistan.”

We both were thinking about Bin Laden, I’m sure. But we didn’t have a common language to take it any further than that.

I had a sense he wasn’t happy about what had happened inside Pakistan. But he never said it. He just went quiet, and I could see him looking at me in the mirror.

I gave him the same amount of money I give all cabbies for the ride home, which includes a tip. I said thank you. He said nothing. And that was that.

If that encounter is as unpleasant as the reaction towards Americans is going to be … well, we certainly can deal with that.